Sea of Glass

While it certainly contains healthy helpings of the delicious finger picking, bubbling synth,

layered electric textures, and scrappy melodic renderings that distinguished Warbler’s debut,Sea of Glass represents an exponential sharpening of Warbler’s folk-informed, experimental indie rock sound. The unique aesthetic vision championed by Warbler’s “brain father” Sean Sullivan feels far more comfortable in its own shoes now, seamlessly supporting choice lyrical diamonds formed in the crucible of Sean’s life.

And it is the depth and maturity of the lyrical content that fortifies this record for multiple visitations. Every time you come back to this record, it has something new to offer—a new facet to savor that you had not previously noticed.

“Be the Beast,” the first track on the record, opens up Sea of Glass with a bang. It frames the problem: from corrupt politicians and Machiavellian bottom-liners all the way to the ugly root—a complicit populace. See, we don’t just feed the beast. We are the beast.

After the first suite of political songs fades out, Sea of Glass transitions to address cultural and social issues. “Vacuum Aspirations” concerns abortion, especially its roots in racism and eugenics. The title is drawn from a procedure sometimes used for abortion (“vacuum aspiration”), where suction first dismembers an unborn baby and his or her womb effects and then removes them from a uterus. Of course, the title also has a double meaning. Abortion creates a personal and societal vacuum—is that vacuum what we truly aspire to achieve?

This album raises the right questions, addresses pertinent issues, and introduces the political discussion to a more realistic realm: personal responsibility.

Having savagely undermined the political and social hopes that contemporary humanism has proffered to the common people,Sea of Glass ends by offering a simple trust in the unchangeable eternal sovereignty of Jesus. It’s an old hope to be couched in such experimental music. But isn’t that always the way of the truth: to be ever changing and ever the same?

https://noisetrade.com/warbler/sea-of-glass